“It is also important to save and invest 10-20% of your paycheck while one is working. Over 40 years a person should have saved enough to retire. It is a scary proposition to have to save up enough to last your family for 30 years+.”f
I tell people 25% and hope that is enough. We saved much more than that for many years and I still hope it is enough. This is a brave new world we boomers are in.
Good luck.
Yeah. I just threw that percentage range out there because I did not save a fixed percentage. As I got a pay raise at least half of it went to savings. So my savings rate would increase from 10% to 11% to 13% to 15% etc. By the time I retired with 40 years service I was up to about 30%. However in my first 15 years of working it was a struggle to save anything. So the bulk of my savings happened over the last 25 years. I was usually fully invested in stocks.
I bailed out of the market once which was a mistake and a lesson learned. Rode out 2008 and came back from that good. It wasn’t easy. It’s never easy.
I recite this story to young people every chance I get. Ratcheting up one’s percentage saved every year is a technique that works. I had to blitz savings during the last 25 years to make up for the first 15 years. Had I started that plan earlier it would have been much easier.